Ignace Cami

Profile

The interdisciplinary practice of Ignace Cami takes folk culture as a starting point to make objects, sculptures, installations and writings. He is keen on activating the contemporary meaning of local history.

It has been several years since Ignace Cami studied printmaking. As his practice evolved, his interest in printing faded, though a pleasure in the drips, slips, and stutters that arise between impressions persists. Today Cami is an initiator of rumors, fables, and urban legends. He does not so much construct stories as release them. Like folklore, they do not reside in a single orator but in their many recantations.

Often Cami uses objects to summon his narratives. Baked cookies, but also drinking glasses chained to ceramic goose heads, spinning tops, crumpled-up paper, small sachets of honey, and ceramic rubbing plates, evoke tender stories full of humor. As Cami writes, “O stories, they spread like a virus looking for symbiosis. A host in which they can hibernate, even if it’s for a short while. There they wait to be transformed. They can carry whatever their host injects into them before rereleasing them into the world. This is metamorphosis. A new generation of the story goes viral, carried by the wind of our words, landing on whomever wants to hear it. Ready to go through the cycle once more.” Like his cookies, Cami’s tales are ingested and metabolized by those who, in the process of retelling them, adapt the stories to make them their own. Each voice confers new meaning. From language’s drips, slips, and stutters emerge new possibilities for shared experience.